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Italia Napoli Cappella Sansevero3

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The Cappella Sansevero (also known as the Capella Sansevero de' Sangri or Pietatella) is a chapel located in the historic center of Naples. The chapel contains works of art by some of the leading Italian artists of the 18th century.
Its origin dates to 1590 when John Francesco di Sangro, Duke of Torremaggiore, after recovering from a serious illness, had a private chapel built in what were then the gardens of the nearby Sansevero family residence, the Palazzo Sansevero. The building was converted into a family burial chapel by Alessandro di Sangro in 1613 (as inscribed on the marble plinth over the entrance to the chapel). Definitive form was given to the chapel by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, who also included Masonic symbols in its reconstruction. Until 1888 a passageway connected the Sansevero palace with the chapel

To the right of the “main door” of the Chapel (as you come in), the memorial statue appears to be an orthodox exaltation of love for God, which makes the heart burn with mystic passion. The various symbolic references to alchemistic and initiatic processes to be found in the Chapel, however, lead one to think that there is a reference to the fire that the alchemist receives from God.

In his Istoria dello Studio di Napoli (1753-54), Giangiuseppe Origlia rightly defines this statue as “the last and most trying test to which sculpture in marble can aspire”. The reference is naturally to the virtuoso work on the net, which amazed famous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers, and continues to astound tourists today. In this regard, the story goes that – as had already happened to Queirolo years before, when he was working on another statue – the sculptor had to burnish the sculpture with pumice personally, as the craftsmen of the period, though specialised in the burnishing phase, refused to touch the delicate net in case it broke into pieces in their hands. Disillusion, as Origlia goes on to say, is a work “solely of the Prince’s invention, and is entirely new of its kind”, as nothing similar was to be found in either ancient or modern art. This monument has, and not by mere chance, a rich and complex symbology. The reference to the contrast between light and darkness, evoked by the main allegory as well as the bas-relief (with the phrase “Qui non vident videant”) and Biblical passages engraved in the open book, appears to be a clear reference to Masonic initiation, where those being initiated would enter wearing a ritual blindfold to open their eyes to the new light of the Truth kept by the Lodge. Raimondo’s dedication is truly beautiful: the life of his father is used as an immortal example of “human fragility, which cannot kmeow great virtues without vice”.

Italia Napoli Cappella Sansevero3

1.
Piazza San
Domenico
Piazzetta
Nilo

2.
The current appearance of the Chapel corresponds to a very precise icono-graphic design,
conceived by Prince Raimondo di Sangro and realised by the artists who worked under his
supervision. From the main door, one enters the single nave, ending in an apse containing
the High Altar. The two side walls have four rounded arches, each one containing a tomb,
except the third arch to the left of the main entrance, where there is the side door, and the
third arch on the right, that opens onto the Tomb of Raimondo di Sangro. The tombs in the
side chapels are dedicated to the illustrious ancestors of the di Sangro family, while the
sculptures set against the pillars separating the arches are dedicated to the women of the
household, past and present (except for Disillusion, erected to the memory of Antonio di
Sangro, father of Raimondo). These statues are certainly the focal point of the Prince of
Sansevero’s original iconographic design. In fact, they represent different Virtues, stages
on a pathway to initiation leading to interior knowledge and perfection. No less important in
the overall symbolic context is the floor with its labyrinth motif, designed by the Prince and
laid by Francesco Celebrano. An ancient symbol, the labyrinth represents the arduousness
of the journey towards knowledge. Some slabs of the eighteenth-century flooring are visible
today in the passageway in front of the Tomb of Raimondo di Sangro, and others are
displayed in the Underground Chamber and the Sacristy

3.
Statues of the virtues: Self-control by Francesco Celebrano, 1767
This monument commemorates Geronima Loffredo, paternal grand-mother of
Raimondo di Sangro. The symbol of the strength of character of the deceased,
“never defeated by hostile destiny nor too exalted by fortune”, is this Roman
soldier with a tame lion on a chain, almost hypnotised by the man’s
gaze: intellect and will thus prevail over instinct, savage energy and the vanity
of the passions

4.
In his will Raimondo di Sangro named it as one of the few
works in the Chapel that he would like to see redone by a
better artist. The subject of control over the passions is
a classical theme of the eighteenth-century. Freemasonry,
as well as an inescapable stage in any initiation process.
In the iconography of the alchemists, the lion is sometimes
symbol of primal matter

6.
Sincerity Virtue is
dedicated to the wife of
Raimondo di Sangro,
Carlotta Gaetani.
As the monument was
erected while Carlotta was
still alive, the portrait
engraved in the medallion
is not fully outlined, as was
customary in the case of
monuments to those still
living

7.
Caduceus, symbol of peace and reason was
the pagan symbol of Hermes and later
represented the Hermetic science.
In alchemy, the caduceus symbolises the
coincidentia oppositorum, or the union of
opposites, sulphur and mercury

10.
Dedicated to Ippolita del Carretto and Adriana Carafa della Spina, wives of
the founder of the Chapel Giovan Francesco di Sangro, Religious Zeal is
apparently the most “orthodox” work of the Sansevero Chapel

11.
An elderly man with the Light of Truth in one hand, and in the other a lash to
punish sacrilege, while he tramples under foot a book from which the
serpents of heresy emerge. A putto with a torch completes the work
of destroying the heretical texts, and two other puttini hold up the medallion
portraying the two women in profile

12.
Statues of the virtues: Sweetness of the marital yoke
Paolo Persico, 1768

13.
Raimondo di Sangro dedicated his Sweetness of the Marital Yoke (a fulsome-
bellied woman holding a feathered yoke representing sweet obedience, and in
her right hand she holds up two flaming hearts: deep mutual love) to the wife of
his eldest son Vincenzo, Gaetana Mirelli of the Princes of Teora, when she was in
the flower of youth

14.
It is for this reason that the woman’s profile is little more than a sketch in
the medallion, as was customary in the case of monuments to those still
living

15.
At her feet a winged putto plays with
a pelican, emblem of charity.
In mediaeval iconography, in fact,
the pelican which pierces its own
breast to nurse its young represents
the sacrifice of Christ on the cross

16.
Lastly, according to the Hermetic
tradition regarding alchemy, the
blood of the pelican is the so-called
natural quintessence

17.
Statues of the virtues:
Decorum
by Antonio Corradini,
1751-52
This work, dedicated to
the first and second wives
of Giovan Francesco di
Sangro, Prince of
Sansevero, represents the
quality shared by these
two women: decorum

18.
This Virtue is embodied in the form of a youth partially draped in a lion skin. By
his side, there is the head of the same animal, resting on a half column,
symbolising the victory of the human spirit over unbridled nature

19.
Decorum
The youth wears a buskin on his right foot and on the left a simple clog,
indicating his dual relationship with the celestial world and the underworld,
as well as, for some, his androgynous nature, and also the behaviour each
man must adopt as befits his station

20.
Statues of the virtues: Divine Love
Francesco Queirolo (?), second half of the eighteenth century
Divine Love, dedicated to Giovanna di Sangro of the Marquises of San Lucido, wife of the fifth Prince of Sansevero, Giovan
Francesco di Sangro. A youth wrapped in a cloak looking towards the heavens and holding a flaming heart in his right hand extols
the noblewoman’s love of God, commemorated in the inscription on the pedestal

23.
The monument was set up at the wish of Raimondo di Sangro to the
memory of Girolama Caracciolo and Clarice Carafa di Stigliano, first and
second wives of Paolo di Sangro, second Prince of Sansevero.

24.
The disciple, carefully
listening to the solicitous
lessons of the teacher,
holds Cicero’s De
officiis in his left hand.
On the pedestal the
motto is “Educatio et
disciplina mores faciunt”,
i.e. “Education and
discipline form good
behaviour”

25.
Like control of the impulses (symbolised
by Self-control), education through the
study of traditional texts and interior
discipline represents a compulsory stage
in reaching the perfection that the
disciple aims for

31.
Raimondo di Sangro dedicated the monument
to the memory of his “incomparable mother”, Cecilia
Gaetani d’Aquila d’Aragona, who died on 26th December 1710,
when Raimondo was not yet one year old

32.
The gaze lost in time, the tree of life,
and the broken plaque are the
symbols of an existence cut short too
soon, and express the pain of the
son Raimondo, who thus wished to
preserve for the future the features
and virtues of his young mother

33.
The bas-relief on the pedestal also makes
explicit reference to the Gospel story Noli
me tangere (Christ appears to the
Magdalene dressed as a gardener).

34.
The intention of commemorating
Cecilia Gaetani is not the only meaning
of this statue. The veiled woman can
be interpreted as an allegory of
Wisdom, and the reference to the
veiled Isis, special divinity of
the science of initiation, appears
extremely clear (without considering
that a long tradition, in reality unsub-
stantiated, holds that Modesty is
situated in the place where once a
statue of Isis stood in the
Greek Neapolis)

36.
Queirolo’s masterpiece is without question Disillusion, a work dedicated by
Raimondo di Sangro to his father Antonio, Duke of Torremaggiore. After the
premature death of his wife, Antonio led an eventful and disordered life,
entrusting his son to the care of his grandfather Paolo. “Enslaved – as the
plaque states – to youthful passions”, the Duke travelled throughout Europe,
but in his old age, now tired and repentant of his errors, he returned to Naples,
where he spent his last years in the tranquility of the priestly life

37.
The group of sculptures describes a man who has been set free of sin, represented by
the net into which the Genoese artist put all his extraordinary skill

38.
A little winged spirit, with a small flame on his
forehead, a symbol of human intellect, helps the
man to free himself from the intricate netting while
pointing to the globe at his feet, symbol of
worldly passions. An open book rests on the
globe; it is the Bible, a sacred text, but also one of
the three “great lights” of Masonry

39.
The bas-relief on the pedestal, with the story of Jesus restoring
sight to the blind, accompanies and strengthens the meaning of the
allegory